Test Review: CELF-4

Leaders Project Academic Language, Accuracy (Discriminant Accuracy), Achievement Gap, African American English (AAE)/ African American Vernacular English (AAVE), Age Equivalency, Assessment and Evaluation, Bias, Clinical Judgment, Confidence Interval, Criterion Referenced Test, Critical Questions, Cultural Bias, Dialect, Document, General Education, Labeling, Language Delay, Language Difference, Linguistic Bias, Norm Referenced Test, Normal Distribution/ Bell Curve, Normative/Standardization Sample, Percentile, Reference Standard, Reliability, Sensitivity and Specificity, Socioeconomic Status (SES), Special Education, Specific Language Impairment (SLI), Specificity, Spectrum Bias, Speech, Speech Community, Speech Disorder, Standard American English (SAE)/ Mainstream American English (MAE), Standard Deviation (SD), Standard Error of Measurement (SEM), Standard Score, Standardization Study, Standardized Test, Test Reviews, Test Validity, Test-Retest Reliability, Vocabulary

CELF-4 Test Review- Final Draftdocx.pdf

The Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals-Fourth Edition (CELF-4) is a standardized test designed to assess the presence of a language disorder or delay in children aged 5-21. The test contains a variety of tasks, designed to assess the child using a comprehensive and flexible manner. However, results obtained from administration of the test are not valid due to a lack of information as to how the tasks and items were deemed appropriate, insufficient reference standard, and insufficient accuracy in determining the presence of a language disorder. In addition, the test contains many inherent cultural and linguistic biases, rendering it inappropriate for use with bilingual and bicultural children. For example, the test relies heavily on vocabulary knowledge, prior knowledge and experiences, exposure to books, and proficiency in Standard American English. Children from lower socioeconomic status (SES) homes and/or culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds may not perform as well as their peers due to these biases and may be inappropriately identified as having a language disorder. For these reasons, the CELF-4 should only be used to probe for information and not to identify a disorder or disability.